From Draft NOtices, July-September 2021
Why Would a General Defend the Study of Critical Race Theory in the Military?
— Isidro Ortiz, PhD
“America’s Top General Defends Study of Critical Race Theory.”
This was the title of one in a series of articles on the congressional testimony of U.S. Chief of Staff General Mark Milley that appeared in media venues during the week of June 21. The testimony took many by surprise for it had been expected that the General would offer testimony congruent with the ongoing conservative denunciation of critical race theory (CRT), which has been discussed by journalists such as Marisa Lati and others. But the general, to the chagrin of Republican Congressmen, defended the study of the theory in the military.
The general’s testimony did not clarify what critical race theory is. Indeed, it may have added to the confusion for the general claimed that he wanted to understand “white rage,” suggesting that the theory was developed for such a purpose. White rage has existed, as Carol Anderson has documented in White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide. But CRT was not developed for understanding a white backlash to social, economic and political advances by Blacks and other historically oppressed communities. A brief review of its origins and tenets may serve to bring much needed insight to this debate and enable understanding of the general’s stance. It is possible to construct more than one history of the CRT and to identify various definitions of the concept. Nevertheless, there is common agreement that it emerged in the 1970s as a theoretical approach within the field of critical legal studies. Originated by mostly African American scholars, CRT practitioners sought to develop a jurisprudence that accounts for the persistence of racism in American law. By focusing on racism, the scholars challenged the “end of racism thesis,” the notion that racism had ended and that race no longer mattered in American society. This thesis had gained traction in legal and educational circles in the 1970s and ‘80s.
Although initially grounded in legal studies, scholars such as Daniel Solorzano and his colleagues subsequently took the nascent theory into educational studies where they undertook the “unearthing of prevalence and persistence of racism within society and reproduced in education and schools.” As detailed in Critical Race Theory: New Discourses, CRT is “a scholarly and political approach to examining race that leads to a consequential analysis and profound understanding of racism. It argues, as a starting point that the axis of American social life is fundamentally constructed in race. As a result, the economic, political, and historical relationships and arrangements that social actors have to institutions and social processes are all race based.” According to CRT theorists, “as a whole this idea has been purposely ignored, subdued, and marginalized in both dominant and public discourse and there are serious repercussions that arise from this structural blindness.”
As identified by Capper, the tenets of CRT are: permanence of racism, whiteness as property, counter storytelling and majoritarian narratives, interest convergence, critique of liberalism, and intersectionality. Among these tenets one of the most controversial has been interest convergence. Developed by the late legal scholar Derrick Dell, a mentor of former President Barack Obama when Obama was a law student at Harvard, interest convergence is “the notion that whites will allow and support racial progress/justice to the extent that here is something positive in it for them or a ‘convergence’ between the interests of whites and non-whites.” In Bell’s scholarship, a prime example was the decision in the historic case of Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. According to Bell in “Brown v. Board of Education and the Interest-convergence Dilemma,” “desegregation was supported not because racial inequality came to be regarded as immoral but because for a moment there was a convergence of white and black interests. The decision was of ‘value to whites,’ especially those whites in policymaking positions able to see the economic and political advances at home and abroad that would follow abandonment of segregation.” The decision “helped to provide immediate credibility to America’s struggle with communist countries to win the hearts and minds of emerging third world peoples.”
Could Bell’s theory of interest convergence help explain why today, 67 years after the Brown decision, a sitting general would defend the study of a theory whose development was catalyzed by African American scholars and whose study, in general, is regarded as favorable to the interests of historically racially oppressed people? Readers of this may send answers to: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
Works cited/additional reading: Anderson, C., White Rage the Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide. London, Bloomsbury Publishers 2016.
Bell, D., Jr, (2015) "Brown v. Board of Education and the Interest-Convergence Dilemma," Harvard Law Review 93(3).
Capper, C., (2015) "The 20th-Anniversary of Critical Race Theory in Education: Implications for Leading to Racism," Educational Administation Quarterly, 51(5).
Critical Race Theory: New discourses, https://newdiscourses.com/tftw-critical-race-theory.
Lati, M. "What is Critical Race Theory, and why do Republicans want to ban it in the Schools," Washington Post, May 29, 2021.
Solorzano, D., Ceja, M., & Yosso, T.(2000). "Critical Race Theory, Racial Microaggressions, and Campus Racial Climate: The Experiences of African American College Students," Journal of Negro Education, 69(1/2).
This article is from Draft NOtices, the newsletter of the Committee Opposed to Militarism and the Draft (http://www.comdsd.org/index.php/draft-notices).
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